


Purple Prose

by Starlithorizon



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Carlos Backstory, Fluff, M/M, does this even count as humor?, if you laugh let me know cause then it's humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-11
Updated: 2014-06-11
Packaged: 2018-02-04 06:22:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1768867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starlithorizon/pseuds/Starlithorizon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos has always been a scientist. He was also briefly the model for romance novel covers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Purple Prose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Regalli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regalli/gifts).



> I posted this on tumblr way back when, and this is all because Regalli suggested the idea, after a long discussion about him being the most ridiculously adorable kid. I'm so glad that this happened.

Carlos had been a cute kid. That much was pretty much incontestable—there were plenty of pictures to prove it. He'd had beautiful, soft, luxuriously ringleted hair since birth practically, as well as big open eyes and the longest lashes his mother had ever seen. Carlos and his twin sister were beautiful, angelic children, as were his other siblings and cousins and plenty of other relatives. Plenty had been said of his genetic jackpot. Carlos hadn't thought much of it, even when his mother's friends cooed over her beautiful children. It didn't even cross his mind until he was eighteen and already worried about paying back his student loans.

It had all been Marcie's fault. Marcie was a third-year English major who, as it turned out, had written a dozen cheesy romance novels under the name "Lucinda Divine". She'd been the one to tell him that he'd be perfect for the gig when her publisher was looking for a model for the covers. They'd been at lunch with a group of friends, the six stuffed into a tiny booth, arms crisscrossing in search of fries, when she said so.

"Seriously, Carlos, you'd be _perfect_ for it! Someone be a wind machine! Get his hair blowing in the breeze!" Marcie cried. She was grinnixng hugely.

"If any of you blow in my face, I'll eat all your food," Carlos threatened, earning more wild giggles from everyone.

"But she's right, man! You're hot! You'd be perfect!" Tina chirped.

"If I saw your face on the cover of one of those books at the grocery store, I'd buy it," Eric chimed in. Carlos groaned and everyone laughed, and a couple of the books were proudly displayed when Carlos visited him ten years later.

"You guys are ridiculous," Carlos finally said. "That's not really my thing. Plus, they'd never let me be that guy."

* * *

Carlos modeled for at least fifty different novels in the space of three years. He made a small fortune from it and did his best to ignore it. His mom called him every time she found one at the grocery store, and the call mostly consisted of her spouting off the lines between fits of laughter. Everyone else in his family did just the same.  
He wasn't ashamed of it, honestly. Yeah, some of the books were _incredibly_ bad, and he'd eventually just stopped reading them altogether, but it was a relatively fun part of his past. He still spoke with a couple of the other models he shot with. He'd stood mostly naked behind them enough times to forge an awkward friendship, and they sent emails back and forth sometimes.

It wasn't until he revealed his small history to Cecil one night that he started to regret all of those shoots. Although, really, it wasn't until he came home to find a stack of them on Cecil's nightstand that he started to very _distinctly_ regret it.

"Oh, masters of us all, Carlos, you weren't kidding!" Cecil croaked as he turned a page. He was lying on the bed, reading glasses perched on his nose, hair undone and flowing long behind him. He looked up at Carlos, bright laughter in his brown eyes. "A tortured vampire poet. That's more than I could ever have hoped for!"

Carlos groaned, seeing the cover of the book Cecil was reading. He was staring off into some distance, his hair and open shirt billowing back as he held up a hand. He looked wistful, and it was _almost_ not ridiculous, but the vampire fangs poking into his bottom lip sealed the deal.

"Oh, God."

"Tell me, Carlos: does your tortured soul bleed?"

Carlos laughed at that and flopped down on the bed, scooting so that he could rest his head on Cecil's lap.

"Please tell me you didn't order every single one off Amazon or something," Carlos said. "I posed for like fifty books."

"No, no, of course not. I got a couple of them from a Friends of the Library sale, and this one was from the Ralph's. The rest might be from Amazon, but don't worry: I only ordered thirty. And they were dirt cheap! I'm talking pennies apiece!"

"Pennies?"

"Well, yeah; the insides are all annotated and highlighted and dogeared. They're not in the best condition. But the most important part is perfectly fine. Perfectly scannable."

"Oh, _God_."

* * *

Three weeks later, Cecil was standing at a podium in the community center, and Carlos was standing on the stage behind him. A fan was blowing on him, which was actually pretty nice since the summer was coming in heavy. Cecil read from the stack of books at his elbow while Carlos copied the poses on the covers, which were projected behind them. The whole crowd cheered, and if Josie was the loudest, no one really said anything. Carlos did wink at her, though.

Okay, so maybe it was kind of ridiculous to have a couple of Fabio years behind him, and maybe it was ridiculous that it was essentially everyone's favorite bit of Carlos Trivia. It was part of him, and if maybe sometimes he and Cecil reenacted a few scenes between giggles, then it was absolutely, completely, entirely worth it in the end.


End file.
